Youth Challenge
Unit 4: Tackling Sexual Harassment in Your School
- Back to Table of Contents
- Introduction by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner
- Resources and Worksheets
- Watch the DVD
Teaching strategies
These teaching strategies are designed to assist you to structure the study of this unit in your classroom. The main aims are to raise the students’ awareness of human rights issues and to develop their decision making skills to enable them to find informed and practicable solutions to the issues raised.
Each state and territory education department has strong policies on sexual harassment, as well as other forms of harassment and bullying.
Unit 4: Tackling Sexual Harassment in Your School is designed to support these policies and to engage students in an active examination of sexual harassment - its causes, effects and strategies to address it.
By understanding their rights and responsibilities, students can work together to identify and address sexual harassment in their school - whether it happens to them or if they see it happening to another student.
In this way, students are engaged in the process of strengthening values of respect and non-discrimination in their school community.
In addition, this knowledge and these skills will equip young people to address issues of sexual harassment that they may encounter when they enter the workforce. It also helps them apply an understanding of human rights and responsibilities more broadly in their life.
Learning outcomes
In this unit, students will:
- discuss issues of gender and stereotypes and how this can lead to harassment
- understand key aspects of the law about sexual harassment
- identify a range of rights and responsibilities within a school setting
- apply human rights principles to their own life experiences
- develop cooperative learning skills and decision-making skills.
The Tackling Sexual Harassment in Your School Teaching Strategy is divided into the following stages:
- Stage 1: Introducing the concept
- Stage 2: Hypothesising about sexual harassment
- Stage 3: Defining and understanding sexual harassment
- Stage 4: Applying knowledge and understanding
- Stage 5: Evaluating strategies to address sexual harassment
- Stage 6: Students present their conclusions to the class
- Stage 7: Thinking about your own school
- Stage 8: Applying your findings
Stage 1: Introducing the concept
- Activity sheet: Sexual harassment – true or false?
- Resource sheet: Message from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Ask students to work individually to complete the quiz included in Activity sheet: Sexual harassment - true or false?
During this stage, teachers may also wish to ask students to work in small groups to brainstorm what sexual harassment means.
A classroom discussion should be used to follow-up on the issues raised in the quiz. The discussion should focus around the following four key questions:
- What is sexual harassment?
- Why do some people behave in this way?
- Why is it a problem?
- How can it be addressed?
To conclude this stage, students read a message from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner in Resource sheet: A Message from Elizabeth Broderick - Sex Discrimination Commissioner and work in groups to make their own summaries of the information that is shared in the class discussion.
Stage 2: Hypothesising about sexual harassment
In this stage, students examine a series of hypothetical scenarios that could occur at their school. The Activity sheet: If these were seen and heard in your school.. includes a number of scenarios for students to consider.
Students have to decide if it is an example of sexual harassment and why/why not. In answering each question, ensure that students discuss further the concept of sexual harassment and begin to develop a more detailed definition. Discussion should also continue to focus on why some people behave the way they do.
Students add to the notes they made in Stage 1.
Stage 3: Defining and understanding sexual harassment
- Resource sheet: What is sexual harassment?
- Activity sheet: What is sexual harassment?
- Resource sheet: What’s so wrong about sexual harassment?
Students now look at the legal definition of sexual harassment using Resource sheet: What is sexual harassment? and Activity sheet: What is sexual harassment? to examine two scenarios.
Organise the class into small groups and then ask each group to apply the sexual harassment definition and flow chart to one of the scenarios in the activity sheet. Each small group reports back to the class about why their scenario was/was not an example of sexual harassment.
Ask students to re-consider the answers to Activity sheet: Sexual harassment – true or false? after reading through the legal definition of sexual harassment.
In order to clarify why sexual harassment is an important issue, students work in groups to examine the Resource sheet: What's so wrong about sexual harassment?, which includes useful information on how sexual harassment and bullying can affect individuals.
At this stage, students may also wish to revisit Activity sheet: Sexual harassment – true or false? The answers to the quiz questions are included, but teachers may also wish to use this opportunity for a short class discussion which further clarifies the definition of sexual harassment.
To conclude this stage, each group is asked to report back to the class on their discussion, identifying one main idea statement which summarises their conclusions about 'what is so wrong about sexual harassment'.
Stage 4: Applying knowledge and understanding
- Activity sheet: DVD discussion guide
- Script: Tackling Sexual harassment at school
- Multimedia Resource: Watch the Youth Challenge DVD
The DVD, Tackling sexual harassment in your school, is set in a 'typical' high school and follows a student making a video project about whether or not sexual harassment exists in her school. She records a range of different scenarios. The final scenario features a variety of possible strategies to respond to an incident of sexual harassment.
A text version of the script has been included in the Script: Tackling sexual harassment in your school resource sheet. This may be used as an additional resource, or where the Tackling sexual harassment in your school DVD is unavailable. Teachers may also wish to use this resource as a starting point for some role-playing activities.
As students watch the DVD, they complete the Activity sheet: Video discussion guide, which helps them to identify and explore the issues being raised.
The scenarios and issues raised in the DVD then become the subject of a broad class discussion. They also form the basis of the following small group activity.
Stage 5: Eval3uating strategies to address sexual harassment
- Activity sheet: Character Cards
- Activity sheet: DVD discussion guide
- Script: Tackling Sexual harassment at school
Organise students into small groups. The task of each group is to select one of the situations that they have seen in the Tackling sexual harassment in your school DVD and agree on the best strategies to deal with that situation.
Provide each group with a set of Activity sheet: Character Cards, cut so they can be shuffled like a deck of cards after each strategy has been discussed. The Script: Tackling Sexual harassment in your school may also be useful here to assist students to clearly identify the issues in each of the scenes they have watched.
Students consider each of the scenes they watched in the DVD and design a strategy to address the issues involved using the notes they made on the Activity sheet: DVD discussion guide.
After discussing the different options, each student in the group draws one of the character cards from the pack and decides if this strategy would be appropriate for this person. They replace their character cards and draw a new one for each new strategy that they discuss.
This process helps students to see beyond their own reactions and to demonstrate that different strategies will suit different people.
When the group has examined each scene, they work together to select a scene to prepare for presentation to their classmates in the role-play activity in the following stage.Stage 6: Students present their conclusions to the class
Each group role plays the situation they have chosen, as well as the solution they think would be most appropriate.
Students are given time to work with their groups to prepare their performance. Teachers should encourage students to be creative, using minimal props and basic furniture as their setting.
After each presentation, the solution proposed by the group should be discussed by the whole class.
During this activity, teachers should provide some guidance to students on the boundaries that they should respect when creating their performance. It may be helpful to identify the types of action that is appropriate, making clear that while the presentations can be light-hearted and entertaining, they should not 'cross the line' and engage in actual sexual harassment or any other form of discrimination.
Stage 7: Thinking about your own school
Students work in small groups to undertake a survey to see whether or any problems with sexual harassment exist in their school.
A collection of survey questions are included in Activity sheet: Thinking about your own school to assist students in making a useful assessment of the kinds of behaviour that are common within their own school community.
If students do identify potential problems or examples, discuss with them what avenues are available for students to resolve the problem. For instance, does the school have a policy about sexual harassment? What is in that policy? How is the policy implemented? Are there other strategies that might help?
Teachers should encourage students to discuss the results of their survey in the context of the information they have gathered about the law and sexual harassment in previous stages.
Stage 8: Applying your findings
Following on from the discussion in the previous stage, students could develop strategies that could be implemented in their school to improve understanding within the rest of the school about sexual harassment and effective strategies for dealing with it.
This could include:
- developing or updating and revising the school's sexual harassment policy
- publicising the issue (or the policy) through a poster campaign in the school or via the school newsletter
- raising the issue at a school assembly
- involving the SRC in running a peer education program on the issue for younger students
The Resource sheet: Developing a sexual harassment policy for your school provides useful information on school sexual harassment policies which can be used as a starting point for students in developing their own policies.
These teaching notes are also available for download in 
Word and 
PDF formats.